FHR-8-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register of Historic Places Inventory — Nomination Form See instructions in How to Complete National Register Forms Type all entries — complete applicable sections 1. Name L)
historic Stayton Hoolen Mill
and/or common Paris Woolen Mill (preferred) 2. Location
street & number 535 East Florence Street not for publication
city, town Stayton vicinity of congressional district Second
state Oregon code 41 county Marion code 047 3. Classification Category Ownership Status Present Use district public X occupied agriculture museum X building(s) X private unoccupied commercial park structure both work in progress educational private residence site Public Acquisition Accessible entertainment religious object in process X yes: restricted government scientific being considered yes: unrestricted X industrial transportation no military other: 4. Owner of Property
name Mrs. J. W. Etzel
street & number 778 East Virginia
city, town Stayton vicinity of state Oregon 97383 5. Location of Legal Description
courthouse, registry of deeds, etc. Marion County Courthouse
street & number
city, town Salem state Oregon 97301 6. Representation in Existing Surveys______
title Statewide Inventory Of Historic Prop, has this property been determined elegible? __yes _K_no date 1976______—— federal _JL state __ county __ local depository for survey records State Historic Preservation Office
state Oregon 97310 7. Description
Condition Check one Check one excellent deteriorated X unaltered X original site X good ruin? altered moved date fair unexposed
Describe the present and original (if known) physical appearance The Stayton Woolen Mill of 1905 and auxiliary buildings added at later dates occupy approximately one-and-one-third acres at the east end of Florence Street, on the north bank of the West Stayton Ditch, a power canal which was developed in the 1890s to divert water from the North Santiam River to serve various mills located along Water Street in Stayton, Oregon. The main mill building and a series of additions and sheds are oriented on a north-south axis fronting Florence Street, a 40-foot right of way. The warehouse and shipping room and adjoining office building are located on the north side of the right of way, facing south. Surrounding land use is mixed industrial and residential. Behind the complex, south of the power canal, the open land is in agricultural use. An unimproved parcel to the west of the main mill building is not included in the area proposed for nomination. The 2h story main mill building of post and beam construction, is rectangular in plan and measures 69 x 120 feet. The foundation and ground story flooring, originally wood, were replaced approximately 20 years ago by a layer of gravel overlaid by concrete. Conventional stud walls are finished with horizontal tongue and groove boards inside and are clad with Douglas fir shiplap siding on the exterior. The double-pitched roof with its two roof-ridge monitors is presently covered with composition material. Eaves are unenclosed. The light roof trusses are a modified sag rod type having suspension rods added at a later date. Posts are spaced on 20-foot centers, and ceiling clearance on first and second stories is 10 feet. Fenestration is generous, consisting of simple wood-framed industrial-size stacked wood sash with six over six lights in either end elevation and six-light oblong sash in side elevations. Recently the exterior was repainted red with white trim to match original treatment. Between 1906 and 1908, a 25 x 125-foot single-story lean-to addition of matching construction was added on the west side to expand the weave room. About 1912, a finish room and spinning annex, also of matching construction and measuring 91 x 100 feet, was added to the east side. The north, or front 35 feet of the annex is two stories in height; the remainder is single story. The fabric finishing department is contained in the ground story. Spinning machines are on the second story. The annex also contains an 80-foot square office and a 100-foot square laboratory space partitioned by 2 x 4 stud walls. The stairway to the upper story is of the typical unfinished Douglas fir milled construction found throughout the interior.
About 1916, an 81-foot, single story extension was added to the east end of the annex to house the workshop, boiler room and dye house. The area is covered with longitudinal gable roofs of varying length, depending upon the length of the sections separated by 2 x 4 stud walls. The dye house at the easternmost end has two roof ridge monitors. Detached from these additions, immediately to the east of the dye house, is a 45 x 25 foot, single-story, windowless picker house of clay tile blocks which was added in the 1930s. The picking machines, which reclaimed wool from scrap woolen goods through a shredding process, are no longer used in the mill operation.
Detached from the picker house, on the easternmost end of the property, is a single-story, gable-roofed carbonizer building measuring 35 x40 feet. It, too, was constructed in the 1930s of tile block, except for the wood frame roof with its FHR-8-300 (11-78)
United States Department off the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form
Continuation sheet Item number 7 Page roof-ridge monitor. Although no longer used, the building contains the remains of a German-manufactured gas carbonizer which was once used to remove extraneous vegetable fibers from wool scrap. The carbonizer, employing either hydrochloric or sulphuric acid, was one of the few of its kind in the United States. It was used under Paris' management to remove latex (rubber) from sweater and wool swimming trunks clips from the Jantzen Knitting Mills in Portland. After carbonizing, the waste wool was reworked into robes and blankets. The warehouse and shipping room on the opposite side of Florence Street is an L-shaped building with two longitudinal gables which measure 105 x 110 feet. Across the front is a covered loading dock. The interior is divided into a single-story raw wool warehouse on the east and, on the west, a two-story section for storage of finished goods on the upper level and a ground story shipping room. Construction details are similar to those of the basic complex. The east side elevation of the single-story warehouse portion is windowless and has a large sliding door on rollers. Attached to the west side of the warehouse is a 35 x 18-foot, single-story, gable-roofed office building of matching construction and double-hung windows with one over one lights in the wood sash. The building was modified in 1980 by removal of a portion which extended into the public right of way and by addition of a 10 x 12-foot west wing which serves as the private office of the mill manager. The remainder of the office building houses the receptionist-bookkeeper and a records storage area. Local wool growers deliver sheared fleece, or raw wool to the warehouse in sacks weighing up to 300 pounds. The sacks are weighed on the warehouse platform scales and the grower is paid in cash at the preva iling wool price. The fleece is sent to Portland on Paris Woolen Mills trucks for washing and scouring, which removes the lanolin, dirt and manure. The process results in an approximate weight shrink of 50 percent. From the warehouse, the scoured wool is moved with hand trucks across the street to the dye room. Here the wool is placed in huge round stainless teel kettles with the dye water and heated by steam for a certain length of time. After dyeing, the wool is dried in a drying machine at the dye room and then moved with a hand truck via an elevator to the card room storage bins on the third level of the main building. Here the wool is oiled with a special oil to facilitate the carding process. Sometimes, blends of different kinds of wool or wool and synthetics are mixed according to ratios desired by the customers. Also, several colors can be blended for heather yarns. Next, the wool is blown through steel piping to the carding machines in the card room on the second level of the main building. The carding process passes the wool through a system of rollers covered with wire teeth, which forms fibers into a thin web. Carding "blends" and straightens the fibers and removes some of the natural vegetable matter. The thin web that results from carding is then divided into narrow strips which are rubbed together to form the "roving." Roving is the process of getting the carded wool onto spools. The spools of roving are then moved with hand carts to the south end of the second floor, which is the spinning room. Here the spools are placed on the spinning frame racks and the strands threaded down through twister tubes and finally through the travelers which sail around and wrap the bobbins at high speed. This process, which twists the yarn to give it strength, is called "spinning." FHR-8-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form
Continuation sheet______Item number 7______Page 2_____ The yarn-filled bobbins are then carted to the weaving room on the first floor of the main building. Half the yarn is tranferred to large spools, which are called beams. The beams are placed on the looms and the yarn is drawn through harness frames to form the "warp" (lengthwise yarn). The other part of the wool is transferred from the spinning frame to small bobbins that fit into the shuttles of the loom for weaving. The yarn is woven across the "warp" and is called "filling." The looms are automatic and are mechanically programmed to select and weave the correct colors of filling yarn to create the desired pattern. If the woven fabric is to be a fringed blanket, it is next run through the fringe twisting machine in the finish room of the first floor. The cloth is then closely inspected for defects in the weaving. This inspection is done by hand by pulling the fabric over high horizontal rods so that it is displayed vertically for inspection. This process uses the natural light from the many windows on the south end of the finish room. The fabric is woven wider than desired in the final product. To shrink it to size, it is put through the fulling process, in which it is soaked in hot water for a controlled length of time. The fabric is then dried in the dryer adjacent to the dye room and brought back to the front portion of the finish room for final finishing. Robes and blankets are napped (the fabric is fluffed with wire toothed rollers). Other cloth is sheared in a machine which clips off the fuzzy part of the nap. The fabric is then rolled and carried back across the street to the shipping room. In the shipping room the fabric is cut and bindings sewn on as required. Labels are attached, and the fabric is packaged and boxed for shipping. The boxed products are stored in the warehouse above the shipping room. A small retail store adjoins the shipping room. Following is the machinery inventory, which includes at least one piece of original equipment—a Davis and Furher card waste duster installed when the plant opened in 1905. Several machines date from the period immediately following the First World War, some from the 1920s and 1930s, and the preponderance from 1940 onward. 1 Sargent Burr Picker 24" with Feed, Blower, Drive and Bin, date of installation unknown. 1 Clark 48" Mixing Picker, with Curtis & Marble Feeder, complete with Drive, Spraying and Blowing Systems, installed 1919. 1 Davis & Furber 24" Willow Duster with Drive, installed 1905. 1 Davis & Furber 36" Mixing Picker with Drive and Blending Bin, installed 1918. 4 Davis & Furber, 120 Spindle, Model F Spinning Frames, 6%" Gauge, 5" Ring, installed 1960. 2 Whitin, 120 Spindle, Model E, 6^ Gauge, 5" Ring Spinning Frames, installed 1940. 1 Foster, Model 102, 30 Spindle, 6" Traverse, 5°57' Cone Winder, installed 1961. 2 Davis & Furber, 3 Cylinder, 48" x 60" Woolen Cards, '89 Arch, Ring Doffer, Harwood Feed, Belt Drive, installed 1924 and 1926. FHR-8-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register off Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form
Continuation sheet______Item number____7______Page 3____ 1 Davis & Furber, 3 Cylinder 48" x 60" Woolen Card, '89 Arch, Harwood Feed, Whitin K4DB Tape Condenser, Belt Drive, installed 1927.
1 Whitin, Model G, 3 Cylinder 60" x 60" Model H Feed Box, K4B Tape Condenser, Individual Motor Drives, installed 1955.
1 B.S. Roy, 60" x 48" Card Floor Grinder, date of installation unknown.
3000 12" Wooden Spinning Frame Bobbins
50 56" x 2V x 9" Card Spools
100 8" Wooden Filling Bobbins, Automatic
100 Warp Jackspools
35 Loom Beams for 92" and 110" Looms, 28" and 30" Pressed Steel Flanges
150 Filling Boxes
2 Davis & Furber 45" Manual Spooler with Creels, installed 1935.
1 Warp Compression, 48", 48 End High Speed Spooler and Creel, installed 1925.
1 Davis & Furber, Pinless Plate Warp Dresser Reel, 96" on the Flat, Complete with Spool Creel, Beamer Compresser Rack Stand and Neck Reed, installed 1919.
1 Whitin Schweiter Automatic Bobbin Winder with Auto Loader, installed 1964.
14 Crompton & Knowles 92" Automatic Looms with Mutipliers, High Roll Takeup, Individual Drives and Gem Heads, installed 1931-1933.
6 Crompton & Knowles 110" Automatic Looms with Multipliers, High Roll Takeups, Individual Drives and Gem Heads, installed 1930-1933.
1 Gender Motor Robe Fringe Twister, installed 1929. 1 Hunter #26 Fulling Mill, SS Traps, Ladder and Throats Motor Drive, installed 1938.
2 Hunter 8" Dolly Washers, 18" Rubber Rolls and Drives, installed 1921.
1 40" Centrifugal Extractor, installed 1940.
1 Parks and Wool son 36" x 72" Semi-Decator with Motor Drive, installed 1960.
1 Hunter, 10 Pass, Pin Tenter Dryer, 50"-90", Blake Automatic Guiders, installed 1953,
1 Proctor and Swartz Raw Stock Dryer Steam Heated, 88" Screen Apron, installed 1920.
2 Gessner, 80", 24 Roll, Double Acting Napper, installed 1942. FHR-»-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register off Historic Places Inventory — Nomination Form
Continuation sheet Item number Page 1 Davis & Furber, 90", 24 Roll, Double Acting Napper, installed 1942. 1 Parks and Wool son, 72", Double Cylinder Steam Brush, date of installation unknown. 1 Parks and Woolson, 66V 2 Blade, Model A Cloth Shear, installed 1948. 1 Voelker, 66" Steam press, installed 1918. 12 Cloth Sawhorses 1 Hunter, 6' Piece Dye Kettle SS, Herringbone Reel, enclosed, installed 1950. 1 Hunter, 8' Piece Dye Kettle SS, Herringbone Reel, enclosed, installed 1959. 2 Hunter #21 Fulling Mills, SS Traps, Ladders and Throats, Motor Drives, installed 1939. 1 48" Centrifugal Extractor, installed 1959. 1 Riggs and Lombard, 100 Ibs. SS Raw Stock, Pressure Dye Kettle, installed 1940-1942, 1 Riggs and Lombard, 500 Ibs. SS Raw Stock, Pressure Dye Kettle, installed 1944. 1 2 Ton Electric Chain Hoist
1 1 Ton Manual Chain Hoist
6 Raw Stock Trucks
1 Schofield, 36" Rag Picker with Bit Return, installed 1961.
1 Kitson, 18" Rag Picker, installed 1905 (?).
1 Abington Vacuum Stripping System, complete with 75 H.P. Penn. Pump, Traverse Motions, etc., installed 1961. 8. Significance
Period Areas off Significance— Check and justify below prehistoric archeoloav-orehistoric community olannina landscape architecture religion 1400-1499 archeology-historic conservation law science 1 500-1 599 agriculture economics literature sculpture 1600-1699 architecture education military social/ 1700-1799 art engineering music humanitarian 1800-1899 commerce exploration/settlement philosophy theater X 1900- communications X industry politics/government transportation invention other (specify)
Specific dates 1905 Builder/Architect Unknown
Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The main Stayton Woolen Mill building, dating from 1905, is a 2^-story, gable-roofed building of post and beam construction with roof-ridge monitors and assorted extensions and annexes situated on the West Stayton Ditch, a power canal diverting water from the North Santiam River in Stayton, Oregon. Wool processing and manfacturing has been an integral part of Stayton's economy since the town's founding. The Stayton Woolen Mills Company was incorporated in 1905 and flourished to 1911, at which time it was reorganized as Santiam Woolen Mills, an enterprise which extended through the 1920s. As the Paris Woolen Mills, the plant's machinery was updated in the years between 1933 and 1944. The plant was acquired by John Etzel in 1947, and manufacturing has continued under Etzel family ownership to the present day. In fact, while there are older manufactories of its type still standing in the region, the woolen mill at Stayton is one of only four woolen mills still in full operation in the Pacific Northwest. While overhead line shafting is still in place in the Stayton Mill, the carding, spinning and weaving machines are no longer run by direct-drive water power. The plant has been converted to motor-driven electric power. Steam heat is provided by two natural gas boilers. The area proposed for nomination, approximately one and a third acres in size, includes the main mill building, its lean-to weave room addition on the west, the two-story finishing room and spinning annex on the east, a succession of contiguous single-story sheds containing a workshop, boiler room and dye house; and a picker house and a carbonizer building, both of tile block construction. North of this complex, across a 40-foot public right of way, are a two-story, L-shaped warehouse and shipping room and the adjoining single-story office building. The main mill building and its earlier additions are typical of frame construction techniques of the early 20th century. They possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association with an historic base industry in the state of Oregon. Wool growing has contributed to the state's agricultural economy from the earliest Euro-American settlement period. Men such as Joshua Shaw and Joseph Watt drove the first sheep flocks overland to Oregon in 1844 and 1848. Mechanized wool processing was introduced on the Pacific Coast in the Willamette Valley in 1857, when the Willamette Woolen Manufacturing Company opened its plant in Salem. By 1861, the mill at Salem was operating day and night to keep up with the wool clip, and "woolen fever" spread to other parts of the valley. Mills were opened at Brownsville in 1863, at Oregon City in 1865, and at Ellendale in 1866. Beginning in 1867, the industry expanded eastward to The Dalles, aided by steamboat shipping on the Columbia River, and the range lands of eastern Oregon proved so well suited for sheep raising that The Dalles became one of the largest primary wool markets in the world. Huge wool clips were shipped to the centers of the textile industry, Boston and London. Throughout the later 19th and the early 20th centuries, new mills opened, replacing older ones which had closed. Among them were the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill at Salem (1889), the Union Woolen Mill at Union (1898), the Stayton Woolen Mill (1905), and the Pendleton Woolen Mill at Pendleton (1909). By 1940, according to the Dictionary of Oregon History, "Oregon had the largest aggregation of woolen textile machines west of the Atlantic seaboard." By 1950, the ten or eleven mills operated by Oregon companies employed 2,000 workers, processed about 14,000,000 pounds of wool annually, and their products were dispersed to both Western and Eastern 9. Major Bibliographical References______Corning, Howard McKinley, ed. Dictionary of Oregon History (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1956) 273-274. Note on woolen industry in Oregon. Beckham, Stephen Dow, Statewide Inventory Sheets (1976) on Stayton Ditch and buildings of the Stayton Woolen Mills. /« ^ _, „. , Lomax, Alfred L.. Later Woolen Mills Tn n^gon (Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1974), 140-153. 10. Geographical Data
Acreage of nominated property Cfl . 1.33 Quadrangle name Stayton, Oregon •?4nnn UMT References
A H P I 1511.717,6,01 |4i9|6iO|li6iO| j_L Zone Easting Northing Zone Easting Northing Cl I I I I . I , I I I , I , I I , I p| i l l I i El , I I I l I l l I I i I l I I . I Fl . I I I I l l I . I , I l i G , I I I , I , , I 1,1,1,11 Hi i I I I i I , . I I . I i I , . I
Verbal boundary description and justification The Stayton Woolen Mill complex is located in SE-1/4, Section 10, Twonship 9 South, Range 1 West, W. M. in Stayton, Marion County, Oregon. The area nominated encompasses 1.33 acres, more or less, and is legally described as Tax Lot 8800 and the easterly 310.5" of Tax (cont.) List all states and counties for properties overlapping state or county boundaries state code county code state code county code 11. Form Prepared By name/title_____Parr L. Goss, with assistance of Greg C. Etzel, 18141 Fern Ridge Rd., Stayton,0 organization c/o Grabenhorst Brothers Realtors date January 5, 1981 street & number 198 Liberty Street, SE telephone503/362-2471 city or town Salem state Oregon 97301 12. State Historic Preservation Officer Certification
The evaluated significance of this property within the state is: national X state As the designated State Historic Preservation Officer for the 1 laiior felHis toric Preservation Act of 1966 (Public Law 89- 665), 1 hereby nominate this property for inclusion in the Natii rial F legist< ram 1 certify that it has been evaluated according to the criteria and procedures set forth by the Herij ofisei vatic n and Recreation Service. r State Historic Preservation Officer signature / \ v *^ • »Lto \^v1m titie Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer date August 25, 1981
GPO 938 835 FHR-»-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form
Continuation sheet Item number 8 Page markets. Gradually, however, much of the open range land of eastern Oregon was put into wheat production or was subdivided for other uses and the wool clip dwindled. The development of synthetic fibers also affected Oregon's woolen industry, and most of the mills which had been operating in 1950 were closed by the end of the 1960s. Today, the Stayton Woolen Mills plant, that of the Mt. Jefferson Mills at Jefferson, and two manufactories operated by the Pendleton Woolen Mills Company, those at Pendleton and Washougal, Washington, are the only ones in the Pacific Northwest still in full operation. It was in 1866 or 1867, at the height of the "woolen fever" of the 1860s, that Drury S. Stayton set up a mechanized wool carding operation on the bank of Mill Creek, a tributary of the North Santiam River, 17 miles southeast of Salem. His machine-carded wool was a boon to pioneer housewives of the district who were relieved of the "arduous, time-consuming task of hand-carding." In 1872, Stayton platted the townsite at that location which bore his name. Over the next quarter century, Stayton's mechanized carding operation grew slowly to include a small factory producing wool yarn and socks. Then, on April 29, 1905, the Stayton Woolen Mills Company was incorporated by S. Philippi, Fred Carter, and W. L. Freres for $100,000. The 2^-story, 69 x 120-foot main building was erected promptly to house the carding, spinning, weaving, finishing, and clothing manufacture departments. A separate one-story building was built for scouring, drying, dyeing and picking. Automatic fire sprinklers were installed throughout. The mill machinery, shipped by rail from San Francisco and Los Angeles, was powered by a 100 horsepower 30-inch Sampson waterwheel. Knitting machines to make stockings were installed in 1907. A 65-foot water tower with a 15,000 gallon tank constructed for extra fire protection built about the same time no longer stands. By 1908 the 3-set mill at Stayton was producing 125 pairs of blankets and 35 dozen pairs of stockings a day with sixty people on the payroll, but by 1911, the mill had been reduced to intermittent operation. With financial assistance of the community, the company was reorganized in 1912 as the Santiam Woolen Mills by J. P. Wilbur, former manager of the Union Woolen Mill Company. With Wilbur as president and manager, the corporation prospered and was soon selling woolen goods throughout the United States. Under the name of Wilbur Woolen Mills Company beginning in 1913, business peaked at the end of World War I and then began to decline. The mill was finally forced to close in the late 1920s. In 1933 the mill was purchased by Robert D. Paris, an experienced mill hand from Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon. Since then, it has been called the Paris Woolen Mill. Under Paris' management, most of the mill's obsolete machinery was replaced. The organization operated profitably for a decade and was finally sold in 1944 to John W. Powell, formerly vice president and sales manager of the Portland Woolen Mill Company, and his son, John E. Powell, who installed automatic looms to modernize production of robes and blankets. In 1947 John Etzel, a Stayton farmer who had worked as a wool buyer and sorter in the Stayton factory, bought the business and reincorporated the Paris Woolen Mills with mem bers of his family. The family corporation continued manufacturing woolen goods, and, today, the mill operates full time turning out auto robes, pram robes, blankets, and worsted and cooler cloth for race horses. State institutions, including state universities and the Oregon State Penitentiary, provide a stable market for the mill's blankets. FHR-8-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form
Continuation sheet Item number 8 Page Architecturally, though itis not constructed of brick, the mill is similar in form to multi-story mill buildings erected in New England in the 19th century. The present owners have repainted the exterior to match the original treatment of red with white trim. It is unique among historic woolen mills in Oregon in never having suffered a serious fire loss, and it has served the changing policies of no less than six managements over its 76-year history. FHR-8-300 (11-78)
United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form
Continuation sheet Stay ton Woolen Mill Item number ] 0 Page
at that location. The Tax Lots are essentially contiguous, being separated merely by public right-of-way ranging in width from 20 to 40 feet. For purposes of the National Register nomination, the intervening public right of way (Florence Street) nflybe considered to be included. 1640- § 435! 45 12 ,4-;r %J B\\c STREET
oSOOJ 7500 7600 9ZOO 9100 6900: ak•\
A-SO-4- J "" tac- 500 -9600 9700 3-^ 7700 2^ 0 7400. ... » . 9800 -• -J? * <*•&?. U / O * -0 + Jo' ^ 71 "5I Vr'-.^ik« STREET . ___ f^ CSS 1C-*- BCK. . ——s^ /d?800. **' _>"^ \
Sec Map I5AB 9 IW